History, Geography, & MilitaryDiscuss What We Need to Learn From T.E. Lawrence at the Political Forums; From Micheal Korda' new book "Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia"
"From the drawing of national boundaries ...

From Micheal Korda' new book "Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia"
"From the drawing of national boundaries to the use of IEDs, T.E. Lawrence’s impact on the Middle East was tremendous, writes his biographer Michael Korda—and says we must follow his example to fix the region.
T. E. Lawrence was far more than a glamorous, swashbuckling, heroic figure in flowing robes mounted on a camel, leading the Arab tribes against the Turks in World War One. Those who only know him as he was played—brilliantly—by Peter O’Toole, in David Lean’s masterful 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia, do not know the story of Lawrence’s life before 1917-1918, the two-year desert campaign that turned him into an enduring legend overnight, still less the pivotal role he played after the First World War in the creation of the modern Middle East. Today, when the Middle East is the main focus of our attention, and when Muslim insurgency, his specialty (and to some degree his invention) is the main weapon of our adversaries, the story of Lawrence’s life is more important than ever.

Much of what we face today in the Middle East (and even in Afghanistan) has its roots in Lawrence’s doomed struggle to get the Arabs what he (and they) thought they had been promised and deserved for rising in revolt against the Ottoman Empire, and in the betrayal of their hopes and his at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Therein lies the birth of the many grievances and bitterly disputed frontiers that still divide the region fatally, and which in the last 90 years have caused enough bloodshed to stain the sands of the desert red, with no sign that it will stop any time soon. But neither have we turned back to Lawrence to see where the Western world went wrong, or to learn from him how to understand and deal with the roots of Muslim anger at the West, or with the wars of terrorism and insurgency of which Lawrence was to some degree the inventor. It was not for nothing that he was known to the Arabs he rode with as “Emir Dynamit” (Prince Dynamite), the man who more than any other introduced them to novelty of high explosives, and to their use as a weapon and a political statement.

Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia By Michael Korda 784 pages. Harper. $36. Lawrence’s whole life was one of extraordinary achievement and determination: one of the five illegitimate sons of an Anglo-Irish aristocrat who gave up his home, title, and fortune to run away with the young Scottish governess of his four daughters. Despite this unpromising background, Lawrence was a scholar whose “First” at Oxford was so brilliant that his tutor hosted an unprecedented dinner for the examiners to celebrate it, a daring and gifted young archeologist (whose exploits in what is now Syria and Iraq suggest that he might have served as the model for Indiana Jones), a military hero of the first rank, a strategist and writer of genius, and a diplomat and kingmaker who despite his youth dealt with presidents and prime ministers as an equal, and played a significant role in shaping the modern Middle East, as well as warning where its stress points would be—warnings that were ignored at the time, and, worse, are still being ignored today.

Nothing in the Middle East is ever forgotten or forgiven. Hebron is a bone of contention between Israeli settlers and the Palestinians in part because Abraham is buried there, in the Tomb of the Patriarchs. Gaza, now a seething slum and the red-hot center of Palestinian resistance toward Israel, is where Samson, blinded, chained and in captivity, pulled down the temple on the heads and idols of his Philistine captors. It is not therefore surprising that one of Osama bin Laden’s chief complaints against the West—one which often mystifies Westerners—is “the Sykes-Picot Agreement,” the 1916 secret treaty between Britain and France (and Imperial Russia before it collapsed) to divide up the Arab lands of the Middle East between them once the Ottoman Empire was defeated. This conflicted with “the McMahon/Hussein correspondence” between Britain and the Sharif of Mecca in 1915-1916, in which the British agreed, reluctantly and with some significant exceptions, to a single, unitary Arab state, and also, after November 1917, with the famous “Balfour Declaration,” establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In short, the British promised both the Arabs and the Jews more than they could deliver—or that they and the French were prepared to deliver, once the war was won."

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The holdings of the rich are not legitimate if they are acquired through competition from which others are excluded, and made possible by laws that are shaped by the rich for the benefit of the rich. In these ways, economic inequality can undermine the conditions of its own legitimacy.”

From Micheal Korda' new book "Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia"
"On this subject, at least, Osama bin Laden and T. E. Lawrence would have stood as one. Lawrence fought against the Sykes-Picot Agreement, attempted to undermine it, drove the Arabs on in a desperate race to capture Damascus and declare an independent Arab state before the British Army could get there, argued against the Sykes-Picot Agreement vehemently with Wilson, Lloyd George, and Clemenceau after the war in Paris at the peace conference, as well as face to face with King George V at Buckingham Palace, and with the Marquess of Curzon at the War Cabinet. Even at the most courageous and daring moments of his service in the desert, Lawrence was gnawed by these doubts. When he rode off to enter Damascus in 1917, alone and with a price on his head, he wrote an agonized note to his chief in Cairo: “Clayton, I’ve decided to go off alone to Damascus, hoping to get killed on the way... We are calling them to fight for us on a lie, and I can’t stand it.”
It was his view then and later that the Allies had persuaded the Arabs to take up arms against the Turks with a false promise, and that even as the Arabs were fighting, the British and the French were secretly laying claim to the spoils of war in advance, and sharing between themselves the areas that the Arabs had been promised: Lebanon and Syria for France, Palestine, what is now Jordan, and what is now Iraq (with its rich oil reserves) for Great Britain, leaving for the Arabs only a few worthless strips of desert, without major ports or sensible frontiers, like throwing them the carcass of a chicken once the meat had been carved away.
It was his view then and later that the Allies had persuaded the Arabs to take up arms against the Turks with a false promise.
It was not shame at having been beaten and gang-raped by the Turks when he was briefly captured at Deraa (fortunately for Lawrence, they did not recognize him) that caused him to refuse the Distinguished Service Order and the insignia of a Companion of the Bath from the hands of King George V, and also the king’s offer of a knighthood or the Order of Merit. Rather it was Lawrence’s guilt over the fact that the Allies had broken their promises to the Arabs that led him to reject all honors, give up his rank, and join the Royal Air Force in 1922 as an aircraftman second class, the equivalent of a private, under an assumed name, “solitary in the ranks.”
It is not necessary to agree with the Arab point of view about their own history, but it is foolish to ignore it. In the eyes of Arabs, the West (including the United States, which acquiesced to the brutal and cynical British and French partition of the Middle East) is responsible for the fragmented reality of the area today, and for its artificial frontiers. This is the unforgivable “original sin” to Arabs, and the subsequent partition of Palestine is merely a further extension of it, exacerbating wounds that were already there."

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The holdings of the rich are not legitimate if they are acquired through competition from which others are excluded, and made possible by laws that are shaped by the rich for the benefit of the rich. In these ways, economic inequality can undermine the conditions of its own legitimacy.”

I did put a link and saw it didn't show up.sorry FS, I was working on it. You beat me. Thanks for your link! I put it in quotes instead of using the quote button.That review is Korda's own words.

Looks like your nose is cold!

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Quote:

The holdings of the rich are not legitimate if they are acquired through competition from which others are excluded, and made possible by laws that are shaped by the rich for the benefit of the rich. In these ways, economic inequality can undermine the conditions of its own legitimacy.”